Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café—Gwen’s Sourdough Discard Crackers

As most regular readers know, I’m blessed to be surrounded by family and we spend the better part of each long weekend together.  (My family members all work four tens as they call it—four ten-hour shifts Monday through Thursday.)  Well, my granddaughter started vomiting on Friday.  She seemed otherwise pretty perky, so we figured she’d just had too much Pediasure, just like has happened a couple of times in the past.

KOTPE and Buttercup started vomiting Sunday night.  Aaron started on Monday.  Cowboy, our future son-in-law (one month!) began on Tuesday.  Naturally, Blueberry Girl, Ellie, and I are nervous, hoping to avoid their fate. 

When KOTPE and Buttercup started in, I decided it would be best to get the house all perfectly cleaned up and make some chicken noodle soup to take to them, as well as extra to have here should we get stricken down.  Unfortunately, the rain and snow made for an extremely slick driveway, and Ellie would have slid right off and over the edge had not the snow berm saved her.  She attempted to free the truck, to no avail, and Aaron was too sick to help. 

With loads of chicken soup in the fridge as well as other leftovers, there’s no need to make dinner for a few days.  Because I might be carrying cooties, my services weren’t wanted at the post office.  And the friends I was going to teach sourdough making to decided another week would work better.  No one would be visiting this house of ill repute any time soon.

I had a few hours of free time, and I still wasn’t sick.  So I figured I had time to try Gwen’s Sourdough Crackers, which recipe Gwen shared on the blog a few months back. 

Gwen’s Sourdough Discard Crackers

1 cup sourdough discard

¹⁄₃ cup melted butter, olive oil, or melted & cooled coconut oil (I've used all 3 but prefer the coconut oil)
¹⁄₃ cup toasted sesame seeds (I buy black ones that are already toasted from Amazon, but any will do)
1 tablespoon ground chia seeds (optional, but I think they help make the crackers a bit firmer)
OR 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed (optional)
1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour*
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt, plus extra for topping

In a small bowl, stir together starter and butter or oil. Add sesame seeds and chia or flax seeds and 1 cup flour. Mix well, then continue adding flour and mixing until you have a stiff dough. Cover and set aside for 8-12 hours.

After the dough has soured, preheat oven with baking stone to 375°F. Place your dough ball on the counter and break apart a little with your fingers. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the dough and knead to incorporate. Divide dough into fourths and with a rolling pin, roll out each piece very thinly between 2 large pieces of parchment paper. Carefully remove top piece of parchment and sprinkle extra salt (if you have coarse salt, that's ideal) over the rolled out dough; lightly roll over it to press into the dough. Then use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into squares. (The outside edges will be somewhat raggedy, but that's okay.)

Place parchment paper with dough in hot oven on baking stone. Bake about 7-8 minutes. When crackers are done (lightly browned and crispy on the edges), transfer the parchment with the crackers to a large roasting pan on a cooling rack. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough, piling each parchment of crackers on top of those already baked.

After all the crackers are baked, turn off oven, wait about 5 minutes and then return the pan with all the baked crackers into the oven and leave until cooled. When cooled, store in airtight container.

I'm sorry this is so long, but I wanted you to know EXACTLY how I make them. I really think returning the pan with all the crackers is key to having them become nice and crispy. I usually start the dough in the morning, bake the crackers at night and then leave them in the oven cooling until the next morning. They are crispy and delicious! I hope this works well for you too!

*Note.  Gwen’s recipe only indicated using 1 cup of whole wheat flour, and then adding more and mixing it in until the dough was stiff.  I decided an addition ¼ cup of flour for a total of 1 ¼ cups was ideal.  However, that’s just a guideline—a lot depends on how you measure flour as well as the humidity.

Other notes:  I didn’t have chia seeds or flax seed meal, and not enough sesame seeds (which situation has been remedied with an order from Amazon) so I substituted some poppy seeds.  I used a 12” pizza stone. 

Family reviews:  Well, I felt the crackers needed a bit more salt sprinkled on top.  And as is often reported with first attempts at cracker recipes, the dough could have been rolled out thinner.  In the future I will try to roll the dough out to the edges of the stone so that the crackers will be thinner. 

That being said, wow, these are the best crackers I have ever made.  They taste almost like Nabisco’s Sociables crackers.  Roll them out thin, use star, oval, or round cookie cutters for uniformity, and I bet people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.  Especially if the crackers are topped with some cheese.